Journalists in Egypt attacked amid street violence

At least four local Egyptian journalists were physically attacked
during a weekend of street violence that began April 5, 2013, according to news
reports. The reports said an international journalist was also briefly detained.

On April 5, 2013, Mohammed Sheikhibrahim, the Egypt correspondent
for the international news channel EuroNews,
was attacked by a group of conservative Muslims called Salafis who were protesting
against improving ties between Egypt and Iran, news reports
said. The demonstrators surrounded Iran's interest section in Cairo and accused
the Iranian government of trying to infiltrate the majority-Sunni Egyptian
society. Sheikhibrahim told
EuroNews that the attack began because the

The following Sunday, April 7, 2013, at least three journalists
were attacked when unidentified assailants attended a funeral of
Coptic Egyptians killed in sectarian
clashes that week. The journalists were covering the funeral, which was held
near the Orthodox Cathedral Church in Abbasiya, Cairo.

Bashoy Wasfy, a reporter for the daily Al-Shorouk, was hospitalized after sustaining injuries on his neck
and shoulder from a homemade bomb that exploded outside the cathedral. Bashoy toldAl-Shorouk that the assailants threw the
bomb from the rooftop of a neighboring building.

Unknown assailants shot Mohammed al-Shamy, a photographer for the
daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, and Emad
al-Gebaly, a photographer for the daily Al-Tahrir,
with rubber bullets while the journalists covered the funeral, news reports said. Al-Gebaly told Al-Tahrir that the gunmen climbed the
fence of the cathedral to shoot him and his colleagues.

In an unrelated case, an international journalist was arrested on April
8, 2013, and spent a night in jail,
news reports said.
Rena Netjes, a Dutch journalist based in Egypt, was taken under citizen's
arrest by a café owner who accused her of espionage because she was
interviewing a group of youths in his café about unemployment, the reports
said. In March 2013, an official from the prosecutor's office encouraged
Egyptian citizens to arrest lawbreakers and bring them to their local police station.

Police interrogated Nejtes about texts
messages she received that called for protests against the government. A
spokesman of the Dutch embassy in Cairo told CPJ that the Egyptian prosecutor ordered
Netjes's release after asking her to renew her expired Egyptian press
credentials.

In another unrelated case, an arrest order was issued on March 27,
2013, for a blogger who was accused of insulting the Ministry of Interior, news
reports said. Egypt's Prosecutor General referred Ahmed Anwar to court after he
posted a video on
his personal YouTube account in 2012 that
mocked the police for honoring artists and belly dancers while neglecting
deteriorating security around the country. Anwar has posted several videos
critical of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood on his YouTube
channel.

Local human rights groups like the Arab
Network for Human Rights Information and the Association for Freedom of Thought
and Expression condemned the charges against Anwar, and said it was one example of how the
government uses restrictive communication laws to silence critics. The journalist has not yet been taken into custody.